Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but Names Will Make Me Feel Sick: The Psychosocial, Somatic, and Scholastic Consequences of Peer Harassment

This study examined associations among peer victimization, psychosocial problems, physical symptoms, and school functioning across the 1st year in middle school. An ethnically diverse sample of urban 6th graders (N=1,526) reported on their perceptions of peer victimization, psychosocial adjustment, and physical symptoms during fall and spring. Objective measures of school functioning (i.e., grade point average and absences) were also collected. In Model 1, peer victimization in the fall was associated with spring psychosocial maladjustment and physical symptoms, which in turn predicted poor spring school functioning. Model 2 suggested that psychosocial difficulties increase the risk of victimization, although physical symptoms did not predict victimization. No sex or ethnic group (African American, Asian, European American, and Latino) differences were found in the model structure or the strength of the path coefficients for either model, suggesting that the process is the same for boys and girls and students from different ethnic groups.